Post by mominatrix on Oct 30, 2014 12:22:39 GMT -5
warning: you might not want to read this unless you're in a place / time / mindset for it. Just know, it's fucking scary and awful and true. And it makes me want to scream and scream and scream.
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Rehearsing for death: A pre-K teacher on the trouble with lockdown drills
What can we do about all these school shootings?, teachers ask each other. Lock the doors, we’re told, and assume the worst is coming. (Michael A. Schwarz/For the Washington Post)
By Launa Hall October 28 at 5:18 PM Launa Hall is a teacher in Arlington, Va., and is working on a collection of essays about teaching.
“Remember that activity when we all get in the closet and pretend we’re not even there, so our principal can’t find us?” I choose my words carefully as I prep my pre-kindergarten students for the lockdown drill scheduled for that afternoon. These drills have become routine at Arlington elementary schools, and at schools across the country. After the latest school shooting, on Oct. 24 in Washington state, schools will no doubt be running through drills yet again. What can we do about all these shootings?, teachers ask each other. Lock the doors, we’re told, and assume the worst is coming.
When you’re guiding 4- and 5-year-olds through a drill, your choice of words can mean everything. “Activity,” not “game,” because we laugh during games, and I can’t risk introducing laughter. I don’t say “police,” because some little kids find police officers scary, and I can’t risk introducing tears. Instead, even though our principal isn’t there this day, I want them to picture his kind but purposeful face when they hear the police officers and administrators hustling down the hallway, testing the doorknob of each room. I don’t say “quiet,” because I can’t risk them shushing one another while they are crammed together, practically sitting in each other’s laps. And because it’s not quiet that’s required for this drill, but rather complete silence. As silent as children who aren’t there at all.
After lunch we hear a fiddling with the loudspeaker. Our well-meaning assistant principal is nearing retirement, and certain technologies, such as the many buttons on the intercom, are a strain on her. There is a low mumbling, which may be coaching from the office staff. More fumbling — perhaps a drop. Then, flustered, at last, the assistant principal says, “Lockdown, everyone, thank you.”
My eyes meet my assistant’s over the heads of our students. Usually, we get the announcement: “We are in a lockdown. This is a drill.” The assistant principal didn’t say the word “drill.” But of course it has to be. We were told about it in an all-staff e-mail hours ago. This is totally routine, I tell myself. I’m annoyed that I took even a split second to consider an alternative.
I stand, make purposeful eye contact with my preschoolers and gesture with my hands that we are going to the closet, right now. My expression here must be just so. Too much smile, and they’ll ask questions and laugh. Too much severity, and they’ll balk, rebel or be fearful. Make a sound with my hands or feet, and they will, too. Tip-toe too slowly, and they will, too. All is well, I must convey, but I am not kidding.
We get the children into the closet. My assistant lowers the window blinds, submerging our bright classroom in an odd, midday twilight, while I go to the classroom door. I quickly check for any children in the hallway, anyone I could pull to safety in my room. That’s part of the protocol. But who do I think would be there? The whole school is doing this drill. It is, in fact, just a drill, I reassure myself. I lock the door, pull a paper shade over the glass and, silently, step back to the closet.
We don’t quite fit, 16 tiny bodies sitting crisscross applesauce, hands in laps, plus two adults. But I nudge my way in, and I begin to work the room, pulling out every teacher trick I know to maintain the silence while we wait.
And wait.
We hear the echoing footsteps, then the sharp, metallic rattle of the doorknob. I absolutely know that I locked that door not three minutes before, and yet I’m flooded with an absurd relief when our lock holds. The footsteps fall away down the hallway, and we hear the next door rattle, and the next. It won’t be long now.
But it is. Usually these drills last somewhere between three and four minutes. The doorknob rattles, there’s a pause, and then the principal’s voice on the loudspeaker thanks us for our cooperation and excellent readiness, and invites us to enjoy the rest of our afternoon.
This time, another minute passes, and then another. No announcement. I press my finger to my lips with a look that says: Don’t even wonder for a second if I’m serious because I am. I step from the close air of the closet into the cool, still classroom. I listen. Not a sound.
And even though I know better, even though I could reason my way around this drill, I fall headfirst into the scenario that this whole theatrical production has invited me to play out. Okay, this is it. So, who am I? Am I the one who dies valiantly tackling the shooter? Am I the quick-thinking teacher who saves several hidden children, telling the shooter they’re in the auditorium, before I am shot? Am I the teacher who sprawls into a body shield with all my best intentions but succeeds only in dying along with my charges? My inner voice, as clear as an actual voice in that silence, reminds me: You’re a mom. Hide. You have children of your own. I turn back to the closet.
Near my hand is a stuffed animal we call Puppy Dog, our class mascot. He’s a special friend to my students, who live in apartments and don’t have pets. We sing to Puppy Dog each morning and say goodbye to him every afternoon. I pick him up now with only a vague idea of what trick I’ll pull out next. Maybe we’ll each give him a squeeze, then pass him to the next friend. I don’t know how much more miracle silence I can produce. The children have already far exceeded my expectations. I crouch with them again, aware that I am shaking.
That drill last spring, the one without the word “drill,” lasted 13 minutes. No full explanation was offered about why it went on so long — a mix-up regarding the checking of hallways, it seems, and possibly some missing keys. It doesn’t really matter. Minor mistakes that result in the addition of mere minutes shouldn’t be any big deal.
But this was a big deal. It was the lockdown drill that spilled over its edges into Lockdown. I made the mental shift, if only for a moment, from the routine to a pure, clear terror.
Which of those states of mind makes more sense? I teach in a country awash in weaponry. Maybe that moment I stood alone in my classroom was when I was closest to the truth. In 13 minutes, according to my gruesome and involuntary mental calculus, a single gunman with his effortlessly obtained XM15-E2S rifle and 26 rounds in each of two additional magazines could potentially kill 78 of us. Even considering the time it takes to calmly reload.
Instead of controlling guns and inconveniencing those who would use them, we are rounding up and silencing a generation of schoolchildren, and terrifying those who care for them. We are giving away precious time to teach and learn while we cower in fear.
It’s time to stop rehearsing our deaths and start screaming.
Post by cinnamoncox on Oct 30, 2014 12:33:43 GMT -5
Omg My four year olds have "quiet drills" at preschool. It scares the shit out of me. I'm getting choked up and can't even think of what I need to say right now.
My son is in tenth grade, but last year, early on, late September, I received an email late on a Thursday night from the high school saying they had found a note in the boys' bathroom saying there'd be a bomb that next day in school, and we the parents could keep our child home without penalty. They were having a police presence and were using dogs to sweep the place. I kept him home because I just couldn't send him. Anyway, when I explained to him why I was keeping him home, and told him there'd be extra counselors there to talk to the kids Monday, he asked why. I said because this may be scary or make kids feel unsafe. He said "I never feel safe in school." Cue my wtf face and I asked why not and his answer was "it happens everywhere, why not here?" (He's high functioning Aspergers so he's pretty practical about stuff)
It's been over a year and I still get choked up if I think about that conversation. As a mom, my job it to keep him safe, right, and there was absolutely nothing I could say, he was absolutely right. Why NOT here? We are no different than all go the other middle to slightly upper middle areas where these things happen.
This makes no sense, sorry for the word vomit, I just get wicked worked up about this stuff.
Post by onomatopoeia on Oct 30, 2014 12:34:17 GMT -5
That was hard to get through. I think about my kids' teachers sometimes, how on top of everything they need to do - teach, tie sneakers, find lost mittens, comfort and console and laugh at silly jokes - they shouldn't need to also worry about how to prevent the children in their class from getting shot, how to save them from madmen. Sometimes at random moments I think about Newtown and what it must have been like, and I actually go numb.
DD1 had her first lockdown drill today. But, I went to school to volunteer and as I am in the office signing in, they get a call that another local school is in lockdown because of a spotted gunman. There was some distance and a river between the schools, but all of a sudden the distance didn't' seem so great.
I HATE that this is part of our reality. It is just plain effed up.
My 2 year old son had a lockdown drill at his daycare. I didn't know whether to be relieved that they take security seriously, or terrified that this is what he is going to be growing up in - a world where we have drills for armed gunmen entering schools.
What is wrong with us as a society that we feel this is an acceptable price to pay for the right to have unfettered access to any gun one wants, at any time?
My 2 year old son had a lockdown drill at his daycare. I didn't know whether to be relieved that they take security seriously, or terrified that this is what he is going to be growing up in - a world where we have drills for armed gunmen entering schools.
I felt the same way when my kindergartner told me about his lockdown drill. I had to excuse myself from the dinner table because I started tearing up.
Lockdown drills are no joke. I've worked in two different schools that each had to go into an actual lockdown. In the first, a wayward hunter had gotten too close to school property so a suspicious man with a gun was reported and we were on lockdown for about half an hour while that was sorted out. The second time was just last year when one of our preschool classes returned to their room after lunch to find two bullet holes through the classroom window. We were on lockdown for over 2 hours and teachers personally escorted every pupil at dismissal. It was terrible for all involved; many of our younger students were very distraught and unfortunately for our older kids, the idea of more violence in the neighborhood barely phased them.
Post by mominatrix on Oct 30, 2014 15:08:56 GMT -5
I know I shouldn't have done it, but I've been reading the comments, and OMG:
"A shoot-out is better than a massacre!" - David M. Bennett
And remember in most cases where teachers or other innocent people are armed you probably would not have a shoot out! Most mass shooters are cowards who are afraid to fight it out with somebody else who is armed. They typically shoot themselves or surrender if they are faced with somebody who can fight back!
This is simply working on the sub conscience of children and their parents to work on disarming normal law abiding citizens. I don't know how but we have just got to wrench our children away from these maniac socialists bent on destroying the country
Gee, did any of you Liberal simpletons ever consider the possibility that what makes schools targets is the fact that they're gun-free zones? Evil madmen criminals - y'know, the ones who by definition don't obey the law, including gun laws - know that gun-free zones give them maximum opportunity to inflict maximum carnage. That's about as big a "duh" as there is.
It's why the Aurora theater killer passed by at least 5 other, closer theaters to attack the one he did - because the others did NOT explicitly declare themselves to be "gun-free" the way the theater that he attacked did.
When will you Liberal gun-control nuts learn to think rationally and not emotionally? Because YOUR policies are the reasons we have mass killings, like Ft. Hood, Aurora, Sandy Hook, Virginia Tech - every ONE of them a declared gun-free zone.
That was hard to get through. I think about my kids' teachers sometimes, how on top of everything they need to do - teach, tie sneakers, find lost mittens, comfort and console and laugh at silly jokes - they shouldn't need to also worry about how to prevent the children in their class from getting shot, how to save them from madmen. Sometimes at random moments I think about Newtown and what it must have been like, and I actually go numb.
Her last line is powerful. Thanks for posting.
This is something that always makes me cry. Those poor kids but damn, those poor teachers
I think a lot about what I would do if we had an active shooter in my school. I'd love to think that I would protect my students but I can't be 100% certain I wouldn't want to get the hell out of dodge (or run and get my own kids in a different part of the school). And then I get mad at myself for even thinking that, because parents are relying on me to keep my kids safe. It's unthinkable.
"Hello babies. Welcome to Earth. It's hot in the summer and cold in the winter. It's round and wet and crowded. On the outside, babies, you've got a hundred years here. There's only one rule that I know of, babies-"God damn it, you've got to be kind.”
I wonder how similar this is, psychologically, to the nuclear attack drills my parents had in school as kids.
Good point. My mom mentions that bell sound from the drills growing up. I'll see her thus afternoon, I want to ask her about this.
As a kid, we had fire drills all the time, so eventually it was just like goof off out of class time, know what I mean? It was just commonplace.
My preschoolers do the quiet drills and they've said they hide and Donna (principal) comes to find them. I hate this.
Yep, I remember this as a child in elementary school. It was just one of the things we did. However, thinking back I wonder how much use huddling under our desks really was in the grand scheme of things. If a nuclear weapon dropped on the school, those little desks were going to do squat.
Post by irishbride2 on Oct 30, 2014 15:32:17 GMT -5
I guess I've done so many drills I'm hardened to it. I'm saddened by the deaths of course but the drills do not upset me. We do drills for all sorts of things. I'd rather my 4 year old practice than not be prepared god forbid.
That was hard to get through. I think about my kids' teachers sometimes, how on top of everything they need to do - teach, tie sneakers, find lost mittens, comfort and console and laugh at silly jokes - they shouldn't need to also worry about how to prevent the children in their class from getting shot, how to save them from madmen. Sometimes at random moments I think about Newtown and what it must have been like, and I actually go numb.
Her last line is powerful. Thanks for posting.
This is something that always makes me cry. Those poor kids but damn, those poor teachers
I think a lot about what I would do if we had an active shooter in my school. I'd love to think that I would protect my students but I can't be 100% certain I wouldn't want to get the hell out of dodge (or run and get my own kids in a different part of the school). And then I get mad at myself for even thinking that, because parents are relying on me to keep my kids safe. It's unthinkable.
I think to myself about teachers and caregivers and I wonder how the hell they can do it if they have kids of their own. But then I remember Newtown and that brave woman who talked to the shooter last year and told him she loved him at another school, and you know what? You don’t really ever read stories about the kids that died because the teachers ran away to hide, in fact I’m pretty sure I’ve never heard of it. Maybe I’m naïve and just gobbling up the nice stories of “heroes” the media portrays, but godammit, I’m ok with that I guess because it keeps me from dying due to anxiety every day when I drop my kids off at preschool.
I guess I've done so many drills I'm hardened to it. I'm saddened by the deaths of course but the drills do not upset me. We do drills for all sorts of things. I'd rather my 4 year old practice than not be prepared god forbid.
Yeah, I think I’m here. My mommy heart gets to be me a bit but overall I think they serve a purpose. My biggest reason for feeling this way is some of the active shooter training we received from the US Marshals when I worked in a federal building. They said over and over the difference between someone who has been “trained” and someone who hasn’t is life and death a lot of time because when shit goes down and you get scared your brain redirects all its energy to primal mode. If you haven’t rehearsed what to do, most people (kids included) aren’t able to effectively access any real problem solving, critical thinking etc. So at the end of the day I’d rather have the drills than not, that is until we decide to change our priorities- which will be never.
I guess I've done so many drills I'm hardened to it. I'm saddened by the deaths of course but the drills do not upset me. We do drills for all sorts of things. I'd rather my 4 year old practice than not be prepared god forbid.
Yeah, I think I’m here. My mommy heart gets to be me a bit but overall I think they serve a purpose. My biggest reason for feeling this way is some of the active shooter training we received from the US Marshals when I worked in a federal building. They said over and over the difference between someone who has been “trained” and someone who hasn’t is life and death a lot of time because when shit goes down and you get scared your brain redirects all its energy to primal mode. If you haven’t rehearsed what to do, most people (kids included) aren’t able to effectively access any real problem solving, critical thinking etc. So at the end of the day I’d rather have the drills than not, that is until we decide to change our priorities- which will be never.
There are so many things that go against my gut instinct that I'm glad we've practiced. In a bomb scare, for example, my initial reaction would be to get my kids out of the building. But Our biggest risk points are our gathering places, so those have to be cleared first. If left to my gut reaction, I'd be likely endangering the kids. So I'm glad I've been trained on it.
The impetus behind the drills makes me rage with impotence and despair.
The drills themselves don't bother me. I guess because every generation has had a drill like this where they rehearse for death. Nuclear war; bomb raids; earthquakes; tornadoes; wandering, mad gunmen.
The total impotence I feel is because this drill, this generation, is one that is so preventable, and yet so totally UN-preventable. This kind of death is the most senseless and the most difficult to understand, I think. And the rage comes when I think about Newtown, about that community so totally torn apart, those parents waiting to hear news; and I realize that these images, these funerals, those small, pure faces -- the most monstrous of all crimes, committed several times over in the span of ten minutes -- isn't enough to make people wake up and change things.
And the despair comes when I realize that if that isn't enough to change things, I have no idea what has to happen.
Old white NRA members suddenly being massacred in large numbers.
OMFG. Apparently there was a routine traffic stop on a road that run really close to some of the schools in our district (1 elementary school, middle school and high school). The person they pulled over jumped out of the car and fled. Because of that, the school district went into lockdown. :?
The impetus behind the drills makes me rage with impotence and despair.
The drills themselves don't bother me. I guess because every generation has had a drill like this where they rehearse for death. Nuclear war; bomb raids; earthquakes; tornadoes; wandering, mad gunmen.
The total impotence I feel is because this drill, this generation, is one that is so preventable, and yet so totally UN-preventable. This kind of death is the most senseless and the most difficult to understand, I think. And the rage comes when I think about Newtown, about that community so totally torn apart, those parents waiting to hear news; and I realize that these images, these funerals, those small, pure faces -- the most monstrous of all crimes, committed several times over in the span of ten minutes -- isn't enough to make people wake up and change things.
And the despair comes when I realize that if that isn't enough to change things, I have no idea what has to happen.
This is always where I end with this in my mind. What WILL be horrific enough to be the catalyst for change? Sandy Hook actually happening was incomprehensible to me previously. What/who is so untouchable and so sacred that its destruction would actually cause change to happen?
The impetus behind the drills makes me rage with impotence and despair.
The drills themselves don't bother me. I guess because every generation has had a drill like this where they rehearse for death. Nuclear war; bomb raids; earthquakes; tornadoes; wandering, mad gunmen.
The total impotence I feel is because this drill, this generation, is one that is so preventable, and yet so totally UN-preventable. This kind of death is the most senseless and the most difficult to understand, I think. And the rage comes when I think about Newtown, about that community so totally torn apart, those parents waiting to hear news; and I realize that these images, these funerals, those small, pure faces -- the most monstrous of all crimes, committed several times over in the span of ten minutes -- isn't enough to make people wake up and change things.
And the despair comes when I realize that if that isn't enough to change things, I have no idea what has to happen.
This is always where I end with this in my mind. What WILL be horrific enough to be the catalyst for change? Sandy Hook actually happening was incomprehensible to me previously. What/who is so untouchable and so sacred that its destruction would actually cause change to happen?
There is literally nothing. Do you know how much money the firearms industry makes every year?
Post by penguingrrl on Oct 30, 2014 16:31:11 GMT -5
Ugh. The first time I got a text that Julia had a lockdown drill at school my heart sank. Now I'm used to it, which is scarier still.
And we did end up with a real lockdown this year. We're about half an hour south of where a man (who is still on the loose, although I have a very tin-foil hat theory about it) sniper-shot two police officers and we were locked down when they thought he might be down this way. Such a scary world.
Maybe if the photos of the scene at Sandy Hook had been released, and the public could see that this was not a TV-clean thing, where everyone looks like they're just sleeping. If people really knew what it looks like when you have to identify children's bodies by their backpacks. Maybe that would have changed hearts and minds and priorities. Maybe the sheer horror of just knowing that a classroom full of six year olds was massacred simply wasn't enough to make an impact on Americans, maybe we're so jaded that we needed to see it. I don't know. Maybe it wouldn't have, because we are just so far gone as a society that there is literally nothing that we find more important than our guns, maybe we are so stupid as a people that we are willing to sacrifice our own children to the gun industry's profit line.
I tend to think that if a classroom full of mostly white, middle class (because let's face it, that matters) children barely old enough to tie their shoes being slaughtered didn't make a difference, there isn't anything that will, short of literally every single person losing a child to gun violence and making every single American an activist. But then you see people like those in Kentucky who gave their kid a gun, and their kid used that gun to accidentally shoot and kill their two year old daughter, and they're like, meh, whatever, Jesus and guns, yah!
Maybe if the photos of the scene at Sandy Hook had been released, and the public could see that this was not a TV-clean thing, where everyone looks like they're just sleeping. If people really knew what it looks like when you have to identify children's bodies by their backpacks. Maybe that would have changed hearts and minds and priorities. Maybe the sheer horror of just knowing that a classroom full of six year olds was massacred simply wasn't enough to make an impact on Americans, maybe we're so jaded that we needed to see it. I don't know. Maybe it wouldn't have, because we are just so far gone as a society that there is literally nothing that we find more important than our guns, maybe we are so stupid as a people that we are willing to sacrifice our own children to the gun industry's profit line.
I tend to think that if a classroom full of mostly white, middle class (because let's face it, that matters) children barely old enough to tie their shoes being slaughtered didn't make a difference, there isn't anything that will, short of literally every single person losing a child to gun violence and making every single American an activist. But then you see people like those in Kentucky who gave their kid a gun, and their kid used that gun to accidentally shoot and kill their two year old daughter, and they're like, meh, whatever, Jesus and guns, yah!
I agree with this. It was horrific to see their smiling faces. I have to think that releasing the real shots might shock more people into action. But damn, you don't have a heart if the idea of a room full of fucking first graders dead doesn't get you :/
"Hello babies. Welcome to Earth. It's hot in the summer and cold in the winter. It's round and wet and crowded. On the outside, babies, you've got a hundred years here. There's only one rule that I know of, babies-"God damn it, you've got to be kind.”